Forest fire: Kerala to enlist NASA help

Forest officials will receive real time SMS alerts about the exact location of forest fires.

cause for concern: A file picture of a forest fire at the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary.

With summer round the corner, the Forest Department is planning to make use of NASA’s satellite communication system to detect forest fires.

Forest officials, including range officers and divisional forest officers (DFO), will receive real time SMS alerts about the exact location of forest fires. The Dehradun-based Forest Survey of India (FSI) will provide the inputs from NASA.

Some 165 forest fires occurred in Kerala in 2016 with the highest number recorded in Wayanad and Idukki (30 each), followed by Palakkad, 28. Kerala has 11,300 sq km of forest cover mainly in these three districts. Forest fire is one of the major causes of degradation of forests in the country, according to the FSI.

Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Forest, Land and Resources) P.K. Kesavan told

The Hindu that SMS-based alerts would help reduce the response time to tackle forest fires and marshal resources to reduce damage.

Already, all DFOs have registered their mobile numbers and range officers have been asked to follow suit.

The SMS-based alert system is being adopted close on the heels of the department switching over to the once-prevalent wireless communication network to improve surveillance over Maoist infiltration and poaching and tackle man-animal conflict in the jungles.

Officials said the FSI had been alerting State Forest Departments against forest fires by the MODIS sensor on board the Aqua and Terra satellites of NASA since 2004. But from 2017, the FSI had also started disseminating alerts obtained from SNPP-VIIRS sensor, which has a better resolution compared to MODIS.